IS Google Chrome the Next Firefox

I am a fan of Firefox and I have been using since 2004 end, but I have little concern or thought on Firefox and its future.

Firefox is lacking behind Google Chrome in following area

1. Javascript speed
2. Implementation HMTL 5 web form (though opera leads)
3. HTML5 websocket
4. More HTML5 related...

Javascript Speed, this is well known fact that V8 javascript engine is leader in this space but actually Safari is king in javascript handling

HTML5 Webforms :

Actually HTML5 did bring new things in many areas but it is split into web forms, protocol etc what matter is "after effect" of html5. For example, in the text field "watermark" like implementation using most concise JQuery needs around 500 lines of JS code and few lines CSS. So what is the problem? My point may be sounds naive but still valid in the Internet scale application.

1. Bandwidth saving

2. Browser performance -- no need to download and it knows how to handle effectively since it is natively compiled into browser engine

3. Development effort --- it is somehow shifted to browser developer but it is one time cost

4. Webforms makes very semantic browser knows what type of input and for ex. iPhone like touch based device may throw relavant virtual keyboard etc

HTML5 Websocket:

Firefox has code in its trunk and waiting to be blessed by reviewer. It is more than an year (I guess) here is the bug ref. So what is happening?

Obviously firefox is lacking for the reason and it is clearly good thing for Google Chrome.

Hm... I started using Google chrome when google debuted its chrome browser. And firefox moved to my second most used browser list and conceding its pole post to Google chrome. But change is necessary to keep things evolve...

Erlang Websocket on Mochiweb

After long sleepless night and past two days of continuous work, able to run Websocket on Mochiweb. This is going to be checked into Erlwebsockserver. I really welcome folks to try out on Google Chrome which is the only Browser, apart from Firefox --- which has Websocket in its trunk waiting for review borads blessing.

Opera and Html5

Opera is really great browser but it lacks great brand value. May be because it is started its life as paid browser. I am trying opera 10, it has most of the html5 thingy like all the "input" types including "date" nice date widget is incorporated. I am not able to find "datagrid" which is discarded from html5 but I do find datalist tag is implemented in opera10. So for html5 lovers opera 10 would be the best home ground to play with new tags. Thank you opera for being industry leader to complaint with new standards. This is great effort because google chrome or apple safari -- 2 big guys behind html5 is still lacking with respect to opera. hm... most of the revenue for opera coming from Google. Did I say Google?

HTML5 user defined tag

One of the item lacking from html5 is defining custom tag. It should have provision to make custom tag. Tags are bound by certain parameters. It needs style to render. It needs events to react. So it is possible to provide option to create custom tag and those info related to style and events can be handled (cache etc) by browser.

Secondly,

Html5 should define browser contract. It already does. It have sections for UA aka user agent. So why can;t we define background process for browser? it is possible similar to iphone push notification but here each website can optionally provide API for dealing with "Push" call. Once this is ready, email app like Gmail expose API for new message. So once thats enlisted in browser -- may be by creating html application, new message will be shown similar to how out look shows in task bar but now with application short cut. Google chrome went in this direction but not with what I expected. This will make web application feature complete and compete with desktop application. This is possible as we are again into Browser war. So how is going to come up or going to complain with new standards going to win.

HTML5 and Page Size reduction - My Perspective

AT&T network serving 16 petabytes of Data each day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petabyte
This is not 100% HTML content it includes video/audio other media type content. I found based on html5 new tags, the size of the page can be reduce upto 50% of the total mark up size. What it means is using concise tags eliminate unnecessary markup like extra html tags and CSS and otherstuffs. And also two important media tags Video and Audio would reduce plugin code (it may be one time + some other extra stuffs) It would be huge boon to network. Websocket will enable easy push feature and binary data transfer which also will play friendly to payload. So ultimately new version html (html5) will need less mark up to achieve same effect and also some time less extra enabler code. Size reduction is mainly due to as I said above, Since reduction in html code to achieve same look and feel will ease the Search engine parsing -- it also saves power cost and hence environmental friendly --- connecting loose ends. One more side effect would be performance improvement on the browser as browser needs to parse, understand and apply style etc to only few elements.

1. New html tags so less mark up
   
2. New media tag - video and audio so less dependency need for using media
3. Websocket -- duplex communication eliminates unnecessary round trip and concise data transfer
   
4. Improved browser performance
   
5. Search engine friendly -- less markup to parse and no proprietary plugin to understand
   
6. Less power usage - markup generation and Search engine content parsing
   

Apache's [HTML5 Websocket] Conundrum

Setting the Context:

I think, few days back I created a enhancement request (bug) in apache bugzilla to add new Websocket feature. I got a couple of boisterous comment and I wanted to share that to the other folks. Here is more on the issue https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47485.

Here is what I felt.

Death of the product is not because of the product itself but because of the people behind them, it is because of lacking foresight and shortsighted decision making. I saw death of Netscape and Fall of IE and much more. It is not because of IE is bad but because other alternatives which are too good to omit. If anything fails to catch up with competitor quickly, it means it is manhandled by those aforementioned folks. I am able to smell that in Apache. HTML5 is huge force, it can’t be omitted. I am able to play video in iPhone Safari (without Flash), Firefox 3.5, Opera (Version 10 has more than 95% HTML5 feature implemented), Webkit is in full throttle and it carries easily Safari and Google Chrome browser future forward. HTML5 also comes up with enhancement for Server. Now ball is on Server provides’/Apache’s court. So, Apache should wake up –Why? Websocket is the next driving force for the future Web platform. I don’t want to see Apache’s omission only because of Websocket support. I am able to see quite a lot of web servers are popping up. They are expecting break through – late to market is again going to be big break through for new players (server providers) who has product with those features.

I am also able to see few websocket servers. Googling will atleast give basic minimal knowledge or Answers for the questions like “why?”. I never anticipate all folks who stalk apache are Einstein but my only concern is they should not cause trouble to Apache.

I also found another comment, quite interesting. Websocket is proposed by single guy. I am not able to understand why this is matter. If million folks come up with crappy thingy doesn’t mean that – it is good. But websocket is backed by All the heavy weights – (Google, Apple, Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft (not yet sure)) So Apache’s challenge is to track these naysayers out and shift their focus on impending standards which makes them or keeps them as leader.

Is Apple reinventing the wheel?

I went through Apple's proposal http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-01. It is great to see Apple's push for HTTP Streaming and I appreciate the effort. But devils in details. I have different thoughts here. It looks complex as it needs, server side Segmenter. As per HTTP 1.1, server can handle Chunked transfer encoding (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616 section 3.6.1 Chunked Transfer Coding). When server/client comes to an agreement about size/blocks of chunks, it can stream the video without even the requirement of Playlist (m3p8). It simplifies another call to obtain playlist.

Apple devised this approach for iPhone. And its safari is able to handle video playback natively. When streaming natively handled in HTTP and Html5 video tag and video tag playback execution knows to utilize http transfer encoding, it can do a streaming, we don't even need complex segmenter or intermediary. It is kind of pushing the problem from one place to another.

iPhone HTTP Streaming

I saw an article about how iPhone OS 3.0 Safar handles Video. It is cool, it is now supporting HTML5 video Tag. Safari understands the <video /> or <object /> tag and launches the Quick Time player. I am able to move the scrubber bar. It is kind of cool. The codec supported is not Ogg Theora, it is H.264, please visit Apple site for more.

This will unleash lots of possibilities. Custom streaming or TV Streaming or whatnot - quite possible just with HTML5 and Http Server, may be Erlang will be the language to support needed scalability.

I checked the Video capabilities by converting the video into ".mov" format and created small html page with video tag. Safari understood the video tag and displayed the play button. Once I touch (click) the play button, it launched Quick time iPhone player and it played the Video. I am also able to move scrubber, it felt like a full streaming.

HTML 5 Application Shortcuts

Google chrome has options to create web application as shortcuts. Google chrome calls it "Application Shortcuts". Why can't enhance the functionality of application shortcuts? Why can't we make it as standard somehow?

There are security issues.... It should be tackled. Assume that I am creating the shortcut for my email (live/yahoo/gmail) page. If I get a new message, It should be able to notify user. It may be somthing simple like how iPhone batch notification does or Windows outlook alerts does. There are multiple things associated with it. Browser should ever run in the background or there should be an os level hook or somthing simple. It should have a way to get updates from the source application on the internet etc. So source web application can provide this capabilites. So if the browser is able to some how get the notification from the source server, it can display alerts. It may be web service (REST/JSON/SOAP what not)

It also sounds like there is some similarity(ies) with Html5 websockets or Server Sent Events but not exactly how those are desinged/indented for. These provisions will make browser grow little bit beyond what actually it does now. It will eliminate one day the purpose of native client applications. So create an application shortcut, and tell the browser what to alert/notify. It opens up lots of possibilities.

I just posted this idea to WHATWG. Let me see the feedback....